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7 Selim and Sudun in the Origin Myths Almost without exception, the various origin myths of the Faqari and Qasimi factions assign a pivotal role to the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. “Faqari and Qasimi appeared among the soldiers and bedouin and villages of Egypt only under the administration of the House of Osman,” says al-Damurdashi, while al-Qinali asserts that “the people of Egypt from ancient times were in two factions (farqatayn) . . . until the administration of the House of Osman . . . [when they became] Faqari-Sa˜d and Qasimi-Haram. . . .”1 The implication is that the Ottoman conquest somehow triggered the emergence of the two factions. Ahmed Çelebi and al-Jabarti, however, present two different versions of a tradition that not only links the Ottoman conquest to the appearance of the factions circumstantially, but also gives the conqueror of Egypt, Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–20), an active role in their founding. According to this myth, Selim, on arriving in Cairo in January 1517, following the decisive defeat of the last Mamluk sultan, Tumanbay, is taken to the residence of an aged emir named Sudun who has stayed out of the fighting, preferring to sequester himself on his estate with his two sons, Qasim and Dhu’l-Faqar. On hearing that the sons are experts at the equestrian exercises known as fur¶siyya, Selim orders them to demonstrate their skills to him in a joust the next day. In Ahmed Çelebi’s version, the Ottoman soldiers fall in on Qasim’s side while the “Egyptians” (usually taken to mean defeated Mamluks) join Dhu’l-Faqar; in al-Jabarti’s account, the pairings are reversed. Although the two chroniclers’ narratives differ in key details, the gist of the story is that a permanent rift opens between the forces of Dhu’lFaqar and those of Qasim. From that day forward, the factions named after the two brothers have persisted, with their distinguishing colors 123 124 A Tale of Two Factions and heraldic devices.2 This chapter considers the functions that Selim and Sudun serve as protagonists of this explanatory story, against the background of Selim’s place in canonical Ottoman historical memory, and the elements of late Mamluk sultanate history that probably contributed to the making of Sudun. Selim as Messianic Figure In this particular myth, Selim bears direct responsibility for pitting Dhu’l-Faqar and Qasim against each other. The rather vague awareness that the factions did not exist before the Ottoman conquest becomes focused on the character of Selim, who sets the fateful events in motion. Indeed, he appears as a virtual deus ex machina, bursting onto the Egyptian scene and stirring the pot, so that Egyptian society is irrevocably altered. He is unmistakably a transformer. Yet despite the fact that he brought to an end the Mamluk society that Egypt had known for some 250 years, Selim never appears in a negative light in any of these chronicles. If anything, he comes across as an archetypal, truly larger than life figure, one of those Great Men whose deeds arguably change history. This portrayal is remarkably consistent with the image of Selim in “canonical,” central Ottoman history and literature. Here, Selim is the second of three larger than life sultan-heroes, the first being Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Mehmed II, r. 1451–81), the last Selim’s own son, Sultan Süleyman “the Magnificent” (Süleyman I, r. 1520–66). By virtue of never having been defeated on the battlefield, all three achieved the status of “succored by God” (mu˘ayyad min ˜ind Allåh in Arabic).3 Collectively, these three emperors serve an almost eschatological function in Ottoman history, and certainly in Ottoman collective memory. Mehmed the Conqueror (Fatih Mehmed in Turkish) conquered Constantinople in 1453, fulfilling numerous Prophetic sayings concerning that city and its conquest,4 and bringing to an end the Byzantine Empire, against which successive Muslim polities had struggled for centuries. This conquest, which was viewed by European Christians even more than by Muslims in eschatological terms,5 transformed the Ottomans from a border principality into the heirs of the Roman Empire. Recent scholarship has introduced the notion that Mehmed already contemplated the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Hijaz, and entertained a vision of the Ottoman Empire as guardian of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Indeed, the unwilling Janissary Konstantin Mihalowicz has him declaring, “I would march to attack [3.133.108.241] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 06:47 GMT...

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